Is honey vegan?

Vegans do not eat any animal byproducts -- no meat, no dairy, no eggs. But when it comes to honey, there's a bit of a gray area. Bees make honey and store it in honeycombs as a future food source, and beekeepers extract excess honey for consumers. Some vegans feel that raw honey is acceptable, as long as it was harvested humanely. Others say that honey is an animal byproduct and is therefore off-limits. Is honey vegan?

PERSPECTIVES

For some vegans, this comes down to one things: bees are animals. If the bees make the honey, the honey itself is an animal byproduct, making it off-limits. Plus, taking the bees' honey is exploitive.

Vegans avoid honey and bee products because bees make them. This avoidance makes sense. Vegans avoid animal products, and a bee is an animal.

Others argue that if the reason to abstain from honey is the exploitation of bees or accidental bee deaths that occur during the honey-collection process, then there are many more foods vegans should eliminate from their diets. According to ThoughtCo's Doris Lin:

There are, however, some self-described vegans who do eat honey and argue that insects are killed in other types of agriculture, so they are reluctant to draw the line at honey. Pure vegans point out the line between intentional exploitation and incidental killings, and beekeeping falls into the former category.

Beekeepers are also known to clip the queen bee's wings in order to control bee populations. Some vegans see this practice as inhumane.

But some vegans worry that by eliminating honey from their diet, the vegan movement will seem too extreme to the masses, preventing potential newcomers from joining the ethics-based diet.

ThoughtCo's Lin looks to Michael Greger, M.D, one of the leaders of the animal rights movement, for insight:

He's also concerned that over-zealous vegans will turn off a lot of potential new vegans because it makes our movement look radical if even bees (bugs) are considered sacred.

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